Oct
10
RPPR Actual Play: Call of Cthulhu – Divine Fire playtest 2
ByA group of prisoners has been shipped to a remote laboratory in Nazi Germany during the final days of World War 2. But when they arrive, their guards disappear and they are left to their own devices. The lab is deep within the wilderness and a raging snowstorm makes escape on foot impossible. What happened to the lab’s personnel and what is still inside? Find out in Tom’s second playtest of Divine Fire, a WW2 Call of Cthulhu scenario.
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I haven’t fully listened to it yet, but I have to give you a thumbs up, Ross: releasing this when all of your house has gone to hell.
I hope things get better for you, bud.
I tried to run a game using this version of Tom’s Scenario. It lasted for six hours, the players fought each other nearly constantly, and people failed their SAN rolls amazingly!
Out of ten PCs and NPCs, three managed to survive the scenario. Two freaked out and mutated, two lost their minds, and three where killed in combat. It was amazing.
My group basically refused to try and solve the “mystery”, focusing completely on escape. They didn’t enter the main building until three hours in, spending their time between the barraks, the mess hall, and the machine shed. One fo the PCs freaked out, so the others locked her out in the snow. Bitter, she drained the gas from every truck she could find, got enough to make a trip, and used one of the work trucks to push all of the other trucks off of the cliff, basically stranding the others while she rode off towards the border. Teach them to back stab somebody just because they mutate a little.
Great job again tom, I think I liked the first one better but only because there was more side plot like the radio, and the assistant. Loved the reactor chamber and the whole ending. Its deffently coming along great, cant wait to see it published.
Tad – that sounds amazing!
Yeah, I too liked the first one better. The chase at the end of the first one was scarrier than the reactor and the Col. being dead in the bath.
The SS Private, that was holed up on the second floor, was better than that lame guy the first session.
I still really want to run this scenario, make a nice stew out of it and the first one.
Just finished listening to play test 2 of Divine Fire.
Good fun and very different from the first play test.
One thing I would be a bit worried about is that most groups would probably go in survival mode. Once they have warm clothes, food and guns they will try and leave asap, as any sane person would do…
Ross was being the helpful player, by deciding that “this thing must be destroyed” to further the plot, but you cannot expect that a player will do that every time.
Many groups could miss half the fun if they do not investigate the main building, so think of some motivation for them to do so.
I was worried they wouldn’t even enter the gate to the camp!
This was a blast! It sounds like an excellent scenario overall and a tremendous amount of fun to play.
If I could make a suggestion, it might be interesting to play up the moral dilemma of helping the Nazis or not in the first part of the scenario, when you don’t know what you’re up against. If the PCs are concentration camp inmates then they’ll have pretty strong reactions to anyone in an SS uniform, so that could make an interesting early-game moral question if the PCs suddenly have guns and the SS are relatively helpless — do they snuff they guy they’ll need later on?
Of course once the true nature of the peril is revealed, all of that goes by the wayside because even SS are better than Things Man Was Not Meant To Know — but even then, the SS could be played as being complete bastards who are snide and evil, and who may screw over any PCs who manage to survive.
Loved the AP guys… Although I must admit I was a bigger fan of the first AP.
This one had a more twilight zone-ish ending. Especially Ross’ demise, disappearing into the ethereal otherworld of the old gods. Wow, just wow!
I also liked Bill’s ending. It was funny how NOTHING was affecting his sanity. Meeting a strange creature who promised to enlighten him… naw, no big deal!
Cody, man, you lucky SOB. Wouldn’t a experience like that permanently ruin a guy? Even if he was a hardened French resistance fighter who was used to offing Germans? I kind of wish he would have killed the corporal, it would have been a fitting ending.
All in all a very nice job Tom. I would love to play and/or run this scenario. Just seems like a lot of fun, I figure if it was that fun to listen to, it had to have been even better to play.
Can’t wait until the next AP. Keep up the great work guys!!!
Loved the idea of this, I’ve never gotten to play a game like this.
I think this was better then the first Divine Fire, this felt more personal, whereas the last felt crowded.
Any chance you’ve read about the Norwegian resistance? There are quite a few things you could do with the destruction of the Norsk Hydro heavy water plant, a small group of British-trained commando’s sent into a plant that would be required for the German’s nuclear weapons program.
Great AP. I liked both the first one and this one. the first one felt a little more flushed out but I think it was a time issue more than anything else.
I think It would be interesting When published if you presented 2-3 entrances to the camp ( the air drop, prison, ect) and a few little diferences.
Some of the ideas from the first one I actually utilized in a M&M game I was running at the time.
Last week, I started up a version of this for my group after a long hiatus away from the GM seat.
Unfortunately, I was trying to do things by memory and on the fly, but the result so far has still been very fun. For the moment, the whole thing seems to be a mixture of the first version with its artifact and the second with its more claustrophobic feel. My group are all prisoners from different backgrounds, and have gotten as far as the main building, speaking with and befriending the Private, though they have managed to avoid the barracks. Most of them have some serious SAN loss already, and a couple are wounded thanks to SAN loss-induced outbursts, so I’m looking forward to seeing what happens as we continue tomorrow. All in all, an excellent pair of tests on the same scenario!
Hello Tom,
A couple of weeks ago, my group asked me to prepare another Cthulhu game for them. After recently hearing this show, I almost immediately decided that I wanted to run them through Divine Fire. I prepared the game using the Chupa Open Roleplay Engine Version 2. The group, however, renigged on the night of the game and decided that they wanted to play D&D4 instead.
Well, I decided that I wanted to play the game away, so I floated some ads on five forum sites to see if anyone was interested. I got three bites, two of them from the playbyweb site, so I decided to run the game there. The website link above is a link to the actual game’s page. Lurkers are welcome.
We haven’t started yet, but I’m looking forward to it. I did give you credit, but I changed the name from “Divine Fire” to “die Glocke” in hopes that the players won’t track down this episode and listen to it yet. Yeah, I changed the nuclear reactor in the basement to a Nazi Bell.
I just wanted to let you know that this game was happening.